Authors
Topics
Lists
Pictures
Resources
More about John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck -
East of Eden (1952)
109 Sourced Quotes
View all John Steinbeck Quotes
Source
Report...
He had an idea that even when beaten he could steal a little victory by laughing at defeat.
John Steinbeck
Source
Report...
Maybe the hardest thing in writing is simply to tell the truth about things as we see them.
John Steinbeck
Source
Report...
Well, every little boy thinks he invented sin. Virtue we think we learn, because we are told about it. But sin is our own designing.
John Steinbeck
Source
Report...
A man so painfully in love is capable of self-torture beyond belief.
John Steinbeck
Source
Report...
With a few exceptions people don't want money. They want luxury and they want love and they want admiration.
John Steinbeck
Source
Report...
Maybe that's the reason," Adam said slowly, feeling his way. "Maybe if I had loved him I would have been jealous of him. You were. Maybe-maybe love makes you suspicious and doubting. Is it true that when you love a woman you are never sure-never sure of her because you aren't sure of yourself? I can see it pretty clearly. I can see how you loved him and what it did to you. I did not love him. Maybe he loved me. He tested me and hurt me and punished me and finally he sent me out like a sacrifice, maybe to make up for something. But he did not love you, and so he had faith in you. Maybe — why, maybe it's a kind of reverse.
John Steinbeck
Source
Report...
But think of the glory of the choice! That makes a man a man. A cat has no choice, a bee must make honey. There's no godliness there.
John Steinbeck
Source
Report...
And then we take a soldier and put murder in his hands and we say to him, "Use it well, use it wisely.
John Steinbeck
Source
Report...
But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe.
John Steinbeck
Source
Report...
Give me a used Bible and I will, I think, be able to tell you about a man by the places that are edged with the dirt of seeking fingers.
John Steinbeck
Source
Report...
Maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.
John Steinbeck
Source
Report...
These too are of a burning color—not orange, not gold, but if pure gold were liquid and could raise a cream, that golden cream might be like the color of the poppies.
John Steinbeck
Source
Report...
A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then-the glory-so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished.
John Steinbeck
Source
Report...
Lord, how the day passes! It's like a life - so quickly when we don't watch it and so slowly when we do.
John Steinbeck
Source
Report...
No gift will ever buy back a man's love when you have removed his self-love.
John Steinbeck
Source
Report...
We gather our arms full of guilt as though it were precious stuff. It must be that we want it that way.
John Steinbeck
Source
Report...
When you're a child you're the center of everything. Everything happens for you. Other people? They're only ghosts furnished for you to talk to.
John Steinbeck
Source
Report...
What freedom men and women could have, were they not constantly tricked and trapped and enslaved and tortured by their sexuality! The only drawback in that freedom is that without it one would not be a human. One would be a monster.
John Steinbeck
Source
Report...
It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world.
John Steinbeck
Source
Report...
Riches seem to come to the poor in spirit, the poor in interest and joy. To put it straight, the very rich are a poor bunch of bastards.
John Steinbeck
Source
Report...
When a man says he does not want to speak of something he usually means he can think of nothing else.
John Steinbeck
Source
Report...
You're getting well,' Samuel said. 'Some people think it's an insult to the glory of their sickness to get well. But the time poultice is no respecter of glories. Everyone gets well if he waits around.
John Steinbeck
Source
Report...
The proofs that God does not exist are very strong, but in lots of people they are not as strong as the feeling that He does.
John Steinbeck
Source
Report...
And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.
John Steinbeck
Source
Report...
They must be real people. And this means that every word in every line of speech must be accurate and full of some kind of meaning which stretches not only forward in the book but stems from before in the book.
John Steinbeck
1
2
3
4
5
Quote of the day
Be a sinner and sin strongly, but more strongly have faith and rejoice in Christ.
Martin Luther
John Steinbeck
Creative Commons
Born:
February 27, 1902
Died:
December 20, 1968
(aged 66)
More about John Steinbeck...
Featured Authors
Lists
Predictions that didn't happen
If it's on the Internet it must be true
Remarkable Last Words (or Near-Last Words)
Picture Quotes
Confucius
Philip James Bailey
Eleanor Roosevelt
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Popular Topics
life
love
nature
time
god
power
human
mind
work
art
heart
thought
men
day
×
Lib Quotes